Dark Matters:Twisted but True
Science Channel - 2011/12
Dark matters was a 2 season, 19 episode show, each containing 3 individual stories. It featured on the Science Channel, Hosted by actor John Noble of Fringe and Lord of the Rings, the show takes the viewer inside the laboratory to profile strange science and expose some of history's most bizarre experiments.
Many of the episode stories have now been turned into their own TV series and standalone movies. From the Philadelphia story, to a soviet ape army, CIA LSD experiments to suicidal songs.
Opening to an episode
My job was to fill in all the motion graphics, graphic props for the shoots and presenting the archive in interesting ways. With over 300 VFX shots delivered over the course of the series, this was certainly a challenge to keep up with the fast paced nature of the tight edits and delivery to air.
Thumbnails for VFX shots from the second season
This was a beast of a series, with a very limited budget but an extraordinary concept and team to pull it off. It employs the use of fully green screen shoots of the re-enactments, which were then edited and sent to a Canadian VFX shop, to comp into, as then, revolutionary 360 CG rendered environments.
Some of the onset graphics needed for the green screen shoots
There was a mix of using archived footage and photos,
illustrations and bringing them into a series style and often 2.5D animations. I also built in 3D vistas for some scenes, especially of places that didn’t exist anymore like Tesla’s tower, or the secret bunkers the scientist worked in
